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Back One Mistake Save as PDF
Chapters (56)
  1. Books by Rona Halsall
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. Chapter One
  5. Chapter Two
  6. Three weeks later
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Chapter Four
  9. Chapter Five
  10. Chapter Six
  11. Chapter Seven
  12. Chapter Eight
  13. Chapter Nine
  14. Chapter Ten
  15. Chapter Eleven
  16. Chapter Twelve
  17. Chapter Thirteen
  18. Chapter Fourteen
  19. Chapter Fifteen
  20. Chapter Sixteen
  21. Chapter Seventeen
  22. Chapter Eighteen
  23. Chapter Nineteen
  24. Chapter Twenty
  25. Chapter Twenty-One
  26. Chapter Twenty-Two
  27. Chapter Twenty-Three
  28. Chapter Twenty-Four
  29. Chapter Twenty-Five
  30. Chapter Twenty-Six
  31. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  32. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  33. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  34. Chapter Thirty
  35. Chapter Thirty-One
  36. Chapter Thirty-Two
  37. Chapter Thirty-Three
  38. Chapter Thirty-Four
  39. Chapter Thirty-Five
  40. Chapter Thirty-Six
  41. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  42. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  43. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  44. Chapter Forty
  45. Ten days later
  46. Chapter Forty-One
  47. Seven months later
  48. Love You Gone
  49. Hear More from Rona
  50. A Letter from Rona
  51. Books by Rona Halsall
  52. Her Mother’s Lies
  53. The Honeymoon
  54. Keep You Safe
  55. Acknowledgements
  56. *

It had been hard having a baby again, when the twins were ten and wanting to be active. Especially when Ezra had been the sort of baby who didn’t sleep more than a couple of hours at a time. The result had been Matt taking the girls under his wing while Sara looked after Ezra. That was the point when the family had fractured into two units, and they hadn’t yet managed to bring everyone back together again.

She wondered if it was too late now. If they could ever be the cohesive family she’d dreamed of, that she’d yearned for when she was a child. Not if Matt’s having an affair. The thought made her shiver. Hailey was right, she reminded herself. Cheating was not part of his make-up. He was as committed to his family as Sara.

People change. Look at Mum. She’d gone from being a doting mother to a reckless idiot after their father had died. He’d obviously been the stabilising influence in the partnership, and without him, her mum had gone completely haywire, in a way Sara couldn’t begin to comprehend. She was too young to remember a lot about it, only six years old when disaster had struck, an accident at work that meant her dad never came home again. Hailey, four years older, had a clearer view of it all.

She shook the thoughts from her mind, telling herself it did no good to dwell on the past. Her mum had gone, and all the trouble with her. But the scars remained, both physical and mental. Nothing intentional, but inflicted by neglect, by a woman who’d stopped caring about anything for long periods of time.

Sara shivered in the sudden breeze. Had Matt stopped caring too? She watched Ezra following a butterfly as it fluttered among the bilberry bushes, trying to remember when her husband had last focused all his attention on her and her alone. Nothing came to mind.

I’m losing him.

She swallowed, the very thought making her eyes sting. Don’t be so stupid, she told herself firmly. Hailey’s right. Matt wouldn’t cheat on me. He isn’t like that. Or at least he hadn’t been. But something in him had changed, and now her assurances lacked conviction.

She jumped up and went to join Ezra, marvelling with him at the patterns on the wings of the butterfly, wanting to fill her mind with anything but her niggling suspicions. Matt wouldn’t do anything to destroy the innocent life of his little boy. Or those of his beloved girls. He wouldn’t.

Chapter Four